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10th WTO Ministerial Conference Aims to End Agricultural Export Subsidies
On December 19, the 159 members of the WTO concluded the 10th WTO Ministerial Conference with the signing of a new international trade agreement, the Nairobi Package . The agreement contains several important outcomes on the issue of agriculture and represents the first major achievement by the WTO on this issue since the end of the Uruguay Round talks and the birth of the organization in 1995.
Historical WTO Documents
The Doha Development Agenda has long been a stumbling block for WTO trade talks. The Bali WTO made some headway in addressing the agriculture and food security-related issues that have held up previous agreements, but much remains to be done. The following links provide detailed analysis of both the Doha Development Round's history and the Bali Ministerial talks.
COP21 Paris Agreement Includes Commitments for Climate Financing for LDCs
On December 12, nearly 200 countries signed the landmark COP21 Paris agreement into effect. The agreement’s major achievement is a commitment to keep global temperature increases "well below" 2 degrees Celsius and to pursue efforts to further limit increases to 1.5C by 2100. In addition, the agreement included a pledge from developed countries to provide US$100 billion a year in climate financing to help developing countries reach their emission targets and better adapt to climate change by 2020, with a commitment to provide further financing after 2020.
A global food stamp program, not increasing export subsidies, would better benefit poor and middle-income countries
BY: David Laborde and Eugenio Díaz-Bonilla, IFPRI
Export subsidies for agriculture have been a contentious issue. A particular anomaly in the multilateral trading system framework is that while export subsidies in industrial products have been banned under WTO rules, they are still allowed for agricultural products, including some that are rather industrialized, such as dairy and meat products.
New knowledge-sharing initiative to measure and reduce food loss and waste
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the CGIAR research program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) today launched a new initiative to enhance global cooperation on measuring and reducing food loss and waste. The G20 agriculture ministers requested FAO and IFPRI to launch this initiative in Istanbul, Turkey, this past May.